Credit to Jane Williams for the thread of thought about communication, Richard Rohr for his meditation on dualistic thinking and Kermode & Mayo for the Denis Villeneuve interview
I want to transport you back to December 2000. Mike and I were visiting the Christmas markets in Hamburg, back before the German markets ever came to Manchester. I was determined not to be a typical English tourist and knowing we’d be getting a taxi back from the town centre to the harbour I had practised the German phrase I needed to get us to our boat.
We hailed a cab and clearing my throat I confidently said "der Hafen bitte", the driver looked blank. I tried again, less confident but sure I had the right phrase, "der Hafen bitte..??" Still blank. Once more, rather weakly, I tried "der Hafen bitte???: Still blank. Defeated I tentatively said “the harbour please…?”, “Ya” the driver replied and 10 minutes later we were there.
I thought I’d tried really hard and that the driver would understand me, I thought I was talking his language but no matter how hard I tried he just wasn’t getting it. Communication is so fundamental to our lives. It’s part of everything we do and most importantly key to our understanding and learning in almost everything.
If communication isn’t clear or effective for us, if people aren’t talking our language we might misunderstand, only partly understand or miss the point completely.
I was listening to an interview last week with the French film director Denis Villeneuve. His decision to make films in English, not his native language, struck me, I was intrigued by his career choice, like when I work with overseas nurses, with all the complexities of medical language.
The pauses in the interview were at times noticeable as Villeneuve tried to find the English words he was after, presumably quickly translating in his head.
Whilst contemplating all of this I remembered that communication is a central theme of Villeneuve’s most well-known film, the Sci-fi drama Arrival. Somehow I keep writing sermons about films- but they are one of my biggest passions.
In this film 8 alien space craft have arrived in 8 different locations on earth and the US military are trying to figure out their intentions. They enlist the help of Louise, a linguistics professor whose job it becomes to interpret the complex circular symbols of the life form’s written language.
This may sound a little similar to the set-up of other earth invasion stories but what follows is quite nuanced and emphasises the importance of nuance in our own communications.
When Louise figures out how to ask why the aliens have come, they answer "offer weapon". However, a team in China translates this as "use weapon". Louise argues that the symbol interpreted as "weapon" might mean "tool”. “Use weapon” or “offer tool”.
These are very subtle differences in interpretation but completely change the meaning, a reason why interpreting the bible can be so problematic.
Biblical interpretation and translation is quite an art. It’s generally recognised that the classic King James Version is quite a poor translation of the original texts, many original meanings or inflections are altered, lost or changed entirely. One disciple even changes gender. One reason why the Church of England favours the NRSV translation is because it’s considered a more scholarly text, the interpretation more closely matching the meaning of the earliest copies of the scripture.
This brings me to today’s readings, which individually are beautiful and poetic but together they might form a narrative which for me is one of the greatest entries in the entire 3-year readings cycle.
The message flowing through each of them is that Christ has been the Creator’s eternal companion, whether called wisdom, Jesus or Word, each of these texts refer to the same being, in relationship with God throughout time, as much as time can relate to God, and throughout our written history of humankind’s relationship with God, even before the living person of Jesus, Christ has been the sign of God’s love and his way of communicating with us.
In Proverbs we see the presence of Christ as Wisdom at creation and in companionship with God before creation. We’re told wisdom leads to understanding, but you could read this as Christ leads to understanding.
The Colossians reading details Christ as the person of Jesus, all things created by and for him, God’s co-creator through whom God reconciles all things to himself, all things, including us.
Finally, in that beautiful prologue to John’s gospel we have Christ the word, who was with God and is God.
Here we have, written throughout history, how God has used Christ as his way of communicating with us, his way of helping us to understand and to know who he is, what he’s like and of his drawing us nearer, to make us all part of this too.
God delights in us and longs to draw us nearer, to have us understand ourselves and our purpose by giving us a way of understanding God and God’s purpose.
In these three readings we see that God’s whole purpose from beginning to end is to communicate with us and allow us to enter into that dialogue, to learn to speak God’s language. This is about a reciprocal relationship, not a holy dictatorship, which is why we get a choice, why God never forces himself upon us, and why God still reaches out to those not in communion with him and tries to re-establish a dialogue.
We have Jesus dwelling amongst us, as a way of helping us to learn God’s language, but like learning any language- like my failed attempts at German- it doesn’t always come easily. It takes time and we get things wrong. And like in the film Arrival sometimes we lose the nuance in the interpretation.
Mankind like to make things dualistic, people are good or bad, right or wrong and our bible gets used to back this up, when in truth life has way more nuance than that.
We’re nuanced and complex and we all live in the grey areas where not many things are either black or white, but do you know what? God delights in us anyway. God made us, loves us and wants us to be part of the conversation.
By moving away from a language of duality we’re more able to process things like infinity, mystery, grace, suffering, sexuality, death and love; the issues most people struggle with.
By spending time learning God’s language, exploring what a gift we've been given in Christ, we learn about God's true nature, which is love and compassion.
God’s language, God’s word can be alive in each of us- and by that I mean the same as St John did; The Word, Jesus embodied in each of us, the living word, embodying the loving and compassionate nature of God in all that we do. I believe that’s what God has tried to communicate to us from the beginning and throughout creation, and what we need to do is chose how we respond to that.
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